People aren’t bad they make bad decisions
“He is a bad person, I hate him!” My girls have both been through situations and met people that have made them angry and upset. So have I. Off course! There have been people in my life that I would prefer not spending time with. But unless you plan to hide yourself, on the metaphorical one-man-island of “internal travels” and isolate yourself from the rest of the world, you will have to relate to other human beings.
And humans are messy and we’re all a work in progress. We’re stumbling along trying to survive, feel good and make some sense of our time here on earth. Sometimes we crash into people. Sometimes with enough force as to send that person right into a fall that lands on a third innocent bystander. A woman at work snapped at me, because she’s not slept for days worrying about her terminally ill mother. I fell into an obsessive negative thought pattern wondering if I’d done something wrong. Coming home I brought that energy into our family evening. I was being distracted and absentminded and I argued with my girls for leaving the back packs on the floor.
One of the most important decisions a person can make in life is what to believe about the universe. Is it benign or evil at its core? I choose to believe that people act as good as they can under the current circumstances. When we know better we do better. I choose to believe this because it makes me stronger. It also makes it easier to manage whatever happens in my life.
I don’t feel that you’re on my side!
My drive for understanding why people do what they do has sometimes led to misunderstandings with my daughter. When she’s told me about this or that situation in school and about how someone was being bad I’ve tried to understand that other person’s situation.
When I questioned the situation; “How do you think was he feeling when he said that bad thing to you?” or “how are things for him at home?” my daughter felt I pushed back against her description or objected to her right to feel victimized.
She’s said; “You always try to understand how someone must have felt instead of listening to me! You’re taking their side.”
Sometimes, when it’s not about her, she lovingly hugs me for “Trying to see the good in everyone no matter what”.
I try to explain to her why I want to understand why people do what they do. It’s not to be “a good person” or “turning the other cheek”. I do believe that being positive and looking for the positive is a winning strategy for interacting with people but the main reason is more selfish. I want to understand others so that I can stop being impacted by their negative behavior and to be able to influence them towards a more positive behavior. If I understand them then I can more easily adjust my approach so that we get a win-win situation; I get what I want and hopefully that other person get what she/he wants.
While trying to understand motives for seemingly weird actions by others I also learn about myself. I still do things that surprises me, things that I don’t understand why I do. If I can understand what drives someone else then I can evaluate if I also have that same need/driver.
Understanding someone’s motives does not mean you should accept their behavior
Trying to understand why someone does this or that, which impacts you negatively, does NOT mean that you make excuses for that person to continue to treat you badly. You teach people how to treat you by how you let them and you need to be very clear about your limits and your definitions of terms like respect, love and cooperation.
Understanding their motives just frees you up to working out a solution to the negative impact in your life. Take that woman at work that keeps yelling at you, because she’s under extreme pressure at home. If you are told about the dying mother then you will be in a much better place in meeting this woman with compassion. From understanding comes the ability to not take things personally and you are in a much better position mentally to stay supportive and empathic when you don’t feel personally threatened.
A talk from this perspective will have a much higher chance of success. You’ll be more elegant in finding the phrasing to offer warm support while making it clear that you won’t tolerate being yelled at in the future.
If you believe you are a bad person you will not have hope enough to act
It’s important to switch into the idea that people do what they can under the circumstances not only because it helps you to become more mentally immune to the actions of others. Being able to distance yourself from drama and keep your equilibrium becomes easier if you believe that some people simply make bad decisions instead of thinking you’re surrounded by bad people.
Another reason is that when you get used to trying to understand the underlying reasons for someone else’s negative actions you become more likely to try to understand your own motives. Why do YOU sometimes do things that are not helping you progress in life? Is it because you are a bad person? To believe that you are a bad person is to believe something really disempowering. How can you muster the confidence or courage to change if you believe that you are bad no matter what?
On the other hand, if you are used to meeting negative behavior with an inquisitive mind, you will be more likely to look for and find reasons and motives that you can actually impact and change.
When you are faced with negativity
Unless you plan on escaping to a remote isolated island to fend for yourself you will come across people that impact you. If that impact feels negative then maybe these steps can help:
- Decide that the behavior impacting you is coming from someone who for some reason can’t do better at the moment
- Try to figure out what that person have been or are going through that can explain why they act the way they do
- Remind yourself of a time when you weren’t communicating in the best way. This will increase your level of empathy further
- Become really clear, to yourself, of what changes you need in behavior from this person. What you can live with/tolerate and what you really need to find a different solution to
- Communicate with empathy and compassion for the both of you.
